Tuesday, September 22, 2009

On the day the National Portrait Gallery installed a painting of Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers installed their foot in the Nationals' ass and won their first-ever victory at Nationals Park. It was a cakewalk that served as a perfect tune-up for the playoffs:

Hiroki Kuroda: 6.0 IP, 2R (both unearned), 6K

Rafael Furcal: 4-for-5, 4 RBIs

Matt Kemp: 2 RBIs

James Loney: 3-for-5, 2 RBIs

Casey Blake: 2-for-4, HR, 2 RBIs

Also making appearances were Juan Castro, Juan Pierre, Jason Repko, Blake DeWitt, Jim Thome, A.J. Ellis and Chin-lung Hu. Yeah, it was that type of game.

Want more good news? Clayton Kershaw pitched the last two innings of the game, throwing 39 pitches and striking out four. He hit 94 mph with regularity and looked comfortable, even fielding a high bouncing comebacker to end the game.

Magic numbers drop to 3 (to make playoffs)/7 6 (to win division). Padres and Rockies are tied at six in the fourth inning at Colorado — feel free to scoreboard-watch in this thread!

Man I know people complain about torre abusing his pen. But look at San Franciscos rotation and what's happening to them right now because of overuse. Meanwhile our starters are pretty fresh for the post season.

Just saw the video of Barmes' inside-the-park HR; Luis Gonzalez dove for it and not only did he miss it, his elbow tweaked as well. Looked bad. Barmes scored standing up as the ball rolled into the right field corner.

Tommy looks a lot like Bill Clinton in that photo. Last year or maybe the year before, at the Yard, Dodgers ran this jumbotron gag where they interviewed various people who talked about their own celebrity look-alikes, and Tommy said "People tell me I look a lot like Bill Clinton." And they showed side by side pics that bore him out on that statement.

One of the funniest exchanges of the summer was one time in, probably, June or so after a particularly painful losing effort, I said something like "I'm going to kick the dog, smash a beer bottle, and go to bed without brushing my teeth" and MLASF replied saying "That sounds like the real Dusty Baker."

" Belliard raised his average to .264 before being lifted in the eighth inning for pinch-hitter Jim Thome. But while he was hitting just .246 with five homers in 86 games with the Nationals (51-99) through Aug. 30, he's hitting .322 with four homers in just 19 games since joining the Dodgers.

He's been hot enough that manager Joe Torre has had him starting at second ahead of veteran Orlando Hudson for the time being, riding the hot hand, so to speak.

"I had a talk with O-Dog today, and told him that without him, we wouldn't be where we are right now, in a situation to win something," Torre said, "but Belliard is hot right now, so we'll just ride it as long as we can and see what happens. Orlando understood. He couldn't ignore how well Ronnie was hitting the ball right now."

Sorry I missed all the fun, but what a romp it was. Rick Monday had a good point on the radio about the way Kuroda played the come-backer and got the out at the plate. Some players on lesser teams might have conceded the run and got the out when up by so many runs.

Kuroda, playing for a first place team thought, "We need to make this play every time. It's what we do." As Monday put it, "It's a first place team playing like a first place team against a last place team playing like a last place team."